Summer fun

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we have been very busy so far this summer. I will go into it a bit more in these next couple of posts, along with, of course, some pictures.

The month started with a weekend camping trip in the woods with some good family time:

Playing with bugs - on the playground:And in the great nature center:
We spent a morning having fun with a friend at a funhouse full of bouncy houses and slides:
(yep, that is Quincy climbing up the giant slide)

Lots of things I didn't take pictures of - our 4th of July beach trip, blueberry picking, trip to NY to visit family, and our trip to the big zoo in the city. The trip to the zoo was eventful, first of all it was nearly a hundred degrees - not something we will ever do again in the middle of summer. Second, Quincy and I had a bit of a crash when he stepped in front of me suddenly and stopped. This in itself wouldn't be too bad, but I was wearing sandals and the crash involved a toenail that I had already injured a couple of weeks ago. The result was the toenail on my big toe sticking up in a rather unnatural angle, a great deal of pain, and the loss of that toenail. Oh, and this was at the beginning of our day. It was a memorable trip.

On to more fun stuff, some random fun pictures from this past month (0r so):

Apparently one pair of sunglasses was not enough for Miles:
A very patient and cooperative Batdog:

Long overdue post

It has been a busy summer so far, and I have been neglectful of this little blog, it seems to come last on my list of things to do these days. I will try to do a few posts over the next few days to fill you in a bit on what we have been doing this summer.

Let's see, Quincy is still not wanting to potty train, he no longer even wants to wear underwear. Occasionally, he will play on a potty seat, so we now have one in the living room for him to play with. He often will tell me when he is going, but never wants to go in the potty. I'm being patient and letting him set the pace, trying very hard not to push him. We'll see.

We've been using a new responsibility chart/reward system with Miles that has been working quite well. He has a chart with seven different responsibilities that we can change weekly, ranging from making his bed, feeding the pets, to showing respect, no whining, etc. He can earn a smiley face for each responsibility each day, and if he earns an entire row of smiley faces, he earns a gold coin (plastic) that he can save in his treasure chest. He can also earn or lose gold coins for super good/bad behavior. Once a week he can shop at the 'Mom & Dad store' to redeem his coins for candy, toys, coupons for late bedtime, extra screen time, all sorts of stuff, but some of the stuff is quite expensive (in gold coins) so he he has to chose to save or spend. He has really responded great to this system and works very hard to earn gold coins. He is learning to do chores, the type of behavior we expect from him and how to save.

Some of the things we have done so far, we have been blueberry picking, a trip to NY to visit family, a couple of camping trips - a weekend and a week, a trip to the city to the 'big' zoo (as Miles calls it.) A couple of community band concerts, July 4th on the beach with a campfire, and good friends watching fireworks while the kids caught ghost crabs, a tour of Miles kindergarten and starting to get him ready for school.

Miles is very apprehensive of kindergarten. Last weekend we took him out bookbag and lunch box shopping, he picked out the coolest Ironman bookbag and a Ben 10 lunch box. He was excited about them, and got excited to show off his Ben 10 lunch box at lunchtime, but still fearful of school. Yesterday morning Mike took Miles to visit his elementary school, met the principal and got a tour of the school. He came home and didn't want to tell me much, except that there were 2 playgrounds and a closet full of sports balls in the gym. Last night there was a school readiness fair for the entire school district, he got to see his principal again, she remembered him and although he hid from her at first, later on he talked with her one on one. We got to ride a school bus, a first time thing for Quincy, he was so excited he could barely talk! Miles was super excited and I do believe he is looking forward to riding the bus to school. So at least we may get him there.

Wow, this has turned out to be a long post, and totally not at all going in the direction I planned when I logged on. I do feel that this blog has not ended up being what I originally thought I would do. I feel that instead of just being a let you all know what we are up to and what is going on in our life, it has become a highlight reel of our best of times. Almost a brag blog, look at us doing fun things type of blog. And that isn't really what I like to do. I am excited when we do fun things or the kids do cute/funny stuff, but I don't really like to feel like I am bragging. I also don't like to share bad stuff and feel like I am looking for sympathy. So I am going to try to be more well rounded here, still share fun stuff, but include more day-to-day and not-so-great stuff as well.

Backyard summer fun

It has been sunny and hot here this past week. The boys have wanted to go in the backyard to play in their kiddie pool everyday. Recently I picked up a slip-n-slide as well. So here are some various pictures from our backyard playtime. The boys wore the same swim trunks every day, so the pictures from various days all run into each other.

Their version of a water slide:

Trying to slide together:

The slip-n-slide, this is how far Miles got his first try:

Then they preferred to turn the sprinkler portion off and just walk-n-slide:

Miles has a new-found love of watermelon, he ate nearly half a watermelon in about 3 days:
And we brought out the lawn sprinkler one day - Miles didn't want the water to spray in his eyes, so this was his solution:

Last two weeks

We had some computer problems recently, so our computer was down for a bit and I wasn't able to post some things I had planned to share. Looking back at the last two weeks in the camera, it seems we had kind of a busy time. So I'll try to do a marathon coverage of the last two weeks here.

We have gone strawberry picking:
Miles had his end of the year celebration (otherwise known as graduation) for preschool:They were all stars, and they were each recognized for their 'star quality', Miles's star quality was "clear thinker":

Here is Miles with his friend Sienna:
Miles also had a field day at school, this is what he did for much of it - hitch rides on the back of the riding toys and made his classmates drive him around:

At Mike's spring band concert, the boys hanging out during during intermission:
My parents came to visit, we spent the morning at a local park doing some nature walks and watching branches and leaves float under the bridge:
And of course we have been to the beach:

My Mothers Day camping trip

I asked for, and got, a weekend of camping at the beach for Mothers Day. And it was wonderful.

Some of you may remember we tried to camp at the beach for a weekend a year ago, with gale force winds, a collapsed tent at 2am, and generally a complete fail of a camping weekend. So we watched the forecast very closely for this weekend. The forecast was generally good, calling for light wind and possible scattered showers.

Well, we got there and apparently the weather decided not to go along with the forecast. There were some decent wind, strong enough to make putting up the tent a challenge. We finally got it up and secure, shortly before the kids bedtime. The winds weren't nearly as bad as last year, but still strong enough to bring back memories. This tent was much stronger than the last one and held solid through the night. We woke up to blue skies, light breezes and warm sun that lasted all day.

First order of business, (after a morning walk on the beach) building a fire and cooking breakfast. And we wait for the fire to get hot enough to cook:
Mike got creative and tried something new with the last bit of pancake mix: scrambled pancakes, like the egg version, you fill the griddle with pancake mix and stir until done.

The end result:(Just as a note to those who may want to try this, although it tasted like pancakes, we won't be doing this again, it wasn't great.)

Next up, some kite flying, Miles did this a lot, any chance he got:Even Quincy got into it:
And this is one of my favorite pictures, Mike flying the kite in front of the water, the boys, hand in hand heading to Mike:

Quincy, ready to go to the beach:

It's camping, so we have to have a campfire picture in here:
Another beautiful sunrise on Mothers Day:
Another of my favorite pictures from this weekend, the boys just laughing with each other:

Quincy peeking out of the tent:
Quincy sitting in Mike's chair, watching Mike pack up:Ooh, Mom's Nook:It turned out to be a wonderful weekend. Laying in the tent falling asleep to & waking up to the sound of waves crashing on the beach was incredible. Being able to walk to the beach to catch sunrise, watch the stars at night and just enjoy the beach and water was also pretty incredible. We were fortunate enough to see dolphins swimming on Sunday morning - they were a little ways out, so we could see them, but too far for a decent picture. And the beach was only for use of the campers, and the campground was stretched along a long portion of beach, each camp loop having their own beach access, so we pretty much had the beach to ourselves, only a few other fellow camp neighbors were out there at any given time. It was ideal. Now that we have had a successful camp trip to the beach I am ready to go again!